Natalia Castañeda, mapping the extinct

A few years ago, Danish artist Olafur Eliasson placed several blocks of ice brought directly from Greenland in front of Copenhagen City Hall, which melted live and in real time, before the astonished eyes of passersby. The work, ice watchdidn't require much translation: every year, Melting advances irreversibly on our planet.

We know the theory well. Glaciers are in danger of extinction due to global warming. Sea levels rise, floods increase and water becomes scarce. The work of Natália Castañeda (Manizales, 1982) is not alien to this reality, which it addresses by adding archaeological and autobiographical nuances to the show. roots and futureusing all types of media – drawing, painting, installation… –, among which video stands out.

The exhibition is divided into three sections that ask us about the fundamental questions of our existence –Who are we?, Where did we come from?, Where are we going?–, and it is at the end of the journey that I find the Work that makes the most sense for everyone the set. On video glacier body (2022) tells us about the Colombian mountains and the Pyreneesleaning on a collage of images and testimonials from experts gathered in a table documentary, as if we were viewing the computer screen by opening and closing windows. Among the images of ice, clouds and rivers, and interviews with scientists, there are also notes from the artist written in a Word document in which she asks questions in an attempt to “map the extinct”.

In all his works there are several layers of reading. To the beautiful images and interviews with scientists, the artist's voice is added

in all his works several layers of reading accumulate which Castañeda emphasizes with his voice. In Between the volcano and the slope (2022) it is she who describes a more subjective tour through the mountains, with images, sometimes inverted, projected onto diptychs, palm trees, green landscapes, moors and snow-capped peaks. Your voice also sets the rhythm in look inside (2019), where he speculates about the pre-Hispanic figures from the Quimbaya culture and establishes a parallel between the looting of their sumptuous funerary treasures and the cracks in the environment.

The mountains appear again in the drawings at the entrance, as notes in notebooks and in panoramas displayed in a showcase. And here there is no shortage of the sixth element of nature, which is none other than the accumulation of human waste, plastic bags, bottles and packaging, which the artist transfers to the ceramic pieces.

With one foot in Barcelona and the other in Bogotá, we saw Natalia Castañeda in Spain at the Isabel Hurley gallery and at MEIAC in Badajoz, where this exhibition that is part of the project comes from The Ibero-American expression curated by José Jiménez. It also completes the puzzle of the temporary exhibitions at the National Museum of Anthropology that investigate the connections between art and anthropology. Miguel Ángel Blanco, Miguel Ángel García and Daniel G. Andújar passed through here last year (still in their rooms). The theme goes far.

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